He stops walking. Turns. Leans down until his mouth is at my ear, and I feel the heat radiating off him, the tension coiled in his frame like something that's been held too long.
"Then pick up the pace." His voice is stripped bare—no control left in it, no careful edges, just raw and low and direct. "Because I've had my hands on you for the last hour and I'm about thirty seconds from saying to hell with your place and finding the nearest wall."
A full-body shudder moves through me that has nothing to do with the cold.
And then the image arrives, unbidden and completely unwelcome in its clarity — his hands pinning my wrists above my head, the rough press of brick at my back, the dress shoved up, nothing between us, anyone walking past able to see exactly what he's doing to me — and I should be horrified.
I have never in my life done anything like that. I am the woman who closes the blinds. Who keeps the noise down. Who is always, always too careful, too controlled, too aware of what the neighbors might think.
The thought should stop me cold.
Instead, heat detonates through me so fast my knees go unreliable.
God help me, I want it. I want the wall. I want the risk of it, the rawness of it, the specific obliteration of every careful thing I've ever been.
"My place," I manage. My voice comes out wrecked. "Fast."
Something moves through his expression—too brief to name, but it's there. Hunger. The particular, focused kind that has nothing patient left in it. Like a man who has decided exactly what he wants and is done pretending otherwise. It hits me low and hard, and I have to look away before I do something embarrassing on a public street.
His jacket settles around my shoulders like armor as we walk deeper into the dark. Behind us, an engine turns over. The whisper of tires on asphalt. Kade's hand in mine is the only warm thing in a world gone suddenly cold.
He squeezes my fingers.
I squeeze back.
Sometimes the devil you choose is better than the one that chooses you.
TWO
Kade
The black sedan moves.
After sitting in that corner of the lot for at least forty minutes—engine running, lights off—it shifts into gear the moment we step onto the sidewalk. Not following. Just repositioning, like a predator deciding if the prey is worth the energy.
I catalog the details automatically: older model Crown Vic, aftermarket tint job, dual exhaust, suggesting engine modifications. My first instinct tags it as surveillance—but surveillance forwhom?
I run the math fast.
Someone from my last op in Bogotá, still carrying a grudge. DEA, following a thread from two months back when I inserted into their network without authorization. Local law running a loose tail on the bar, watching for distribution activity.
All three scenarios fit.
All three make more sense than the fourth option my brain tries to generate and immediately discards—that whoever sits behind that tinted glass has any interest in the woman currently walking beside me.
That's paranoia. Not threat assessment.
The angle of their position doesn't fit an exit tail anyway. They face the entrance, not the sidewalk. Whoever it is, they're waiting for someone still inside. I file it and move on.
My holster sits heavy against my hip, the standard Glock loaded and ready. A suppressed secondary digs into my waistband—a paranoid habit I've carried all week and haven't yet decided to break.
My hand settles on Wren's lower back.
She trembles slightly under my palm—adrenaline crash, the aftermath of the bar, whatever else hums violently between us every time I get within arm's reach of her. The thin silk of her dress barely covers her thighs, and every step makes the hem ride up. She tugs it down repeatedly, as if just now registering how little fabric actually exists.
I'm very aware of how little fabric exists. I've been aware since the moment she walked in.
I should have let her walk away alone. Should have gone back inside, finished my beer, minded my own business. But the moment that prick put his hands on her, something primitive in me kicked completely offline. Not rationality. Not assessment. Pure, territorial instinct driving straight through my chest like a spike—mine—before I'd even decided to move.
